I honestly didn’t know if I would ever come back to posting here.
Believe it or not, I had good intentions when I started this blog. I designed it as a place where I could indulge my drive to write by permitting deeper, freer thoughts of mine to flourish, yet controlling my audience enough that I personally knew each of the people that I shared the blog’s URL with. There’s too much impersonal online interaction as it is; I didn’t want another venue for that, nor did I want to create on a platform that allowed people to have just as big of a platform as the creator by using the comments section. However, as Facebook killed off their Notes feature (which had an option to create a specialized list of people that could view your Notes entries), and I didn’t want the job of maintaining my own website, I found Substack. Substack not only promised the blog feel and features I was looking for, but also allowed for people to subscribe to the blog via email, which I vastly prefer over hoping that an impersonal, automated algorithm will share my content with people who I believe may have half a care about what I write.
My first post here at my Thinking Nook was a big one. It’s still up, and I plan to leave it available to read. However, I’ll admit that I was more than a little nervous about posting it. The event and situation I wrote about involved real people - folks I knew and loved - and I did not want to cause or stir up unnecessary quarrels. I stress the importance of the word unnecessary in my previous sentence as I believed quarrels or disputes may occur because I shared the truth of the event in question, and many people didn’t know the details about it until after I wrote about it. But as I’ve learned since then, not every show of anger or frustration is unbecoming, and some displays of these emotions may be righteous and appropriate.
My decision to share the truth was driven not by my ego but instead by my concern for other fellow Christians. I felt the need to speak up in my own way, in my most confident form of communication: writing. I didn’t want anyone to go through what I did, and if they have - or will - I wanted my story to be an encouragement to them. I believe the same today. In the midst of a large cultural movement of apostasy, I wanted to affirm that while some Christians may treat other Christians terribly, this doesn’t mean the Christian victim receives a guilt-free pass to completely disregard the truth of Christianity and succumb to the world’s siren call.
In the time that has passed since my first post, much has happened in my life. It has been a glorious mixture of blessings and trials, all of which can be summed up as God’s provisions and His continual refining of my being. From cultivating relationships to enduring more mysterious and taxing physical health issues, I’m left exhausted, but at the same time thrilled to see what new things God is working both in and around me. Witnessing this has given me motivation to shed the distractions and time sucks that I’ve indulged in to dull any pain or frustrations I’ve had. I feel more drive, more motivation, and interestingly enough, more conviction. This conviction comes from seeing how God has been crafting my story, through both good and bad times, and how much I want everyone to be able to recognize this power and care of His in their lives.
What would be hard for me to answer or explain, should someone ask it of me, is what God has been refining me into. I’m not God, so no, I wouldn’t know exactly what He has in store for me and who I need to be to deal with whatever lies ahead. But what I can say is that some of my traits are being amplified, some are being dulled, and some are being discarded. I’m best able to liken this experience to a song verse. In the song “One Headlight” by The Wallflowers, lyricist Jakob Dylan writes, “Man, I ain’t changed, but I know I ain’t the same.” Many of my drives, my motivations, and my priorities haven’t changed, but how I address them is a very different manner now than before.
This leads me back to dusting off the Thinking Nook.
I have a constant internal conflict that has only gotten harder to deal with in the last couple of years, and I’ll do my best to describe it here. The first part of this conflict is this: whenever I am engaged in a conversation or discussion with someone, my default is to solely listen to them and let them “have the mic,” jumping in only to affirm the things I hear that deserve affirming or to ask more clarifying questions.
My reasons for doing this are many. I believe that the more you allow someone to talk, the more you learn about them, and I love learning about people as much as possible. This also helps me prioritize the words that come out of my mouth - if any - and address what needs to be addressed instead of focusing on every little detail. I really appreciate what Francis Schaeffer practiced, known in some circles as the “55/5” method. Jerram Barrs, a former associate of Schaeffer, wrote that Schaeffer would devote himself to listening for hours to the struggles and questions of those who came to his home:
“He would say, ‘If I have only an hour with someone, I will spend the first 55 minutes asking questions and finding out what is troubling their heart and mind, and then in the last 5 minutes I will share something of the truth.’”
Another benefit of this method is that the more you learn about a person, especially regarding what’s troubling them, the harder it is for you to feel apathetic towards them. Whether we admit it or not, all of us have preconceived ideas or judgments about people when we first meet them. More often that not, those assessments are proven wrong when you learn about who they really are and what they struggle with. With this in mind, practicing the 55/5 method has helped me combat my own personal cynicism and innate tendency to place people into understood and strictly defined “boxes.”
However, I also frequently feel a pull to share what’s on my mind. There are many times where I feel confident enough in sharing my thoughts as I believe they could potentially be a benefit to my conversation partner. I’ll admit that this could possibly be my ego talking, or it could also be something else stirring in me, prompting me to say something that could help someone else. I’m still working on my speaking discernment, but this is the dilemma I face: I tend to suppress my urge to speak because I doubt that what I say will be as helpful as I think it is, fearing that I’m talking just to hear myself talk. The chaser to this is my knowledge that people by-and-large love to talk and few know how to listen, so I want to do my best to set others up for success by being a good listener, because people really need that from others. I know I do. To truly be heard, especially in our loud and distracting age, is a rare thing indeed.
I’m also approaching this dilemma with the understanding that I’ve been dealing with this since a fairly young age. I grew up in a household where my conversation starters or my inclusion in discussions were rarely encouraged. Many of my interests were outside of my parents’ or siblings’ cares, and in discussions that all of us had equal investment, my passionate statements and observations were regularly dismissed. This has continued to this very day, and I struggle daily with the understanding that my blood-family doesn’t show genuine interest or ask me about my pursuits, vocations, activities, etc., yet I am fully expected to listen to them about what’s on their mind and accept their viewpoints and opinions as truth (when many times they are outside of reality’s boundaries). I will admit that in the past I was not the best at disagreeing with others, and I do claim responsibility for that, keeping in mind that as one grows up, one mimics the behavior and actions of those around them.
With all of that being said, I’ve felt the Spirit’s pull on me to get back into writing. It hasn’t been a specific pull or a literal voice, but more of an internal conviction. I believe that one reason for this pull is because with writing, I can get my thoughts out there without feeling the need to clamp up or let others talk. Writing for me is my preferred method of communication, and while I believe every writer needs an audience more than just the “me, myself, and I,” as writing is communication, I can open up here without feeling socially or morally constricted.
I aim to write about theological, cultural, and creative / artistic ideas, as those topics are the ones that light the fire in me the most. But I also love comparing popular quotations and statements to the Truth of reality, dissecting the worldviews behind such quotes. Mixed in with this will certainly be introspective thoughts regarding moments in my personal life, as I have already done here before.
I’m excited to get The Thinking Nook truly active. Much has changed since I first brought life to it, and I’m not the same Scott Kelly as I was then. And yet, here I am, unchanged in many ways. We live a paradoxical life, and it’s imperative that we come to terms with this before we put ourselves in chains.
“The battle for people is centrally in the world of thought." - Francis Schaeffer
Good to hear from you, Scott. I've been getting refined by God myself the last few years. A big light that has gone on for me has been a proper biblical understanding of anthropology, and endeavoring to approach life with a theocentric perspective rather than the man-centered attitude that is our sinful default. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Speak on, brother! ✊ I love the Schaeffer quote you posted because that is so true! Now more than ever we need to speak and preach with boldness! The Lord will take care of our egos. ☺️ It sounds like the Lord is doing lots of work in all of us, really putting us through refining work. I feel so much the same as what you posted here. The Lord is good and He is faithful! I hope and pray that He would fill us with His Spirit that we may proclaim boldly the Word of His Truth! I hope to see more of your thoughts and writings here soon! I just started my Substack as well. 😊